The writer Eva Baltasar (Barcelona, 1978) has just published ‘Mamut‘(Club Editor), the novel that closes the trilogy that began with’Permagel‘continued with’Boulder‘. “I’m tired of talking about motherhood and I want to keep writing about other things,” the writer reveals in an interview with ACN. In ‘Mammoth’, Balthasar tells the story of a “lonely” woman who has the “biological instinct” to be a mother. “I wish I liked it as much as the others, but if I don’t, I’ll have the peace of mind, and no one can take that away from me, for having written the novel I wanted to write,” the author reflects on the third. delivery. Once the trilogy is closed, Baltasar advances that he has already started writing another novel, which is “in its infancy”.
After releasing ‘Permagel’ in 2018, Baltasar started writing ‘Mammoth’ the following year, in 2019, but saw the need to make a ‘stop’ before tackling the finale. During this time he took the opportunity to write ‘Boulder’, which eventually became the second installment of the trilogy. Once the first two books were published, Club Editor initially announced that ‘Mammoth’ would be published on March 10, 2021, and on March 1 it rectified by justifying that the author was “sharpening its fangs.” the history.
“I’ve played it a lot and it’s not usual, it’s the first time I’ve played so many novels,” Baltasar confesses about ‘Mammoth’. Along these lines, he details that he has changed “whole parts” and even removed characters. “I’ve debugged it a lot, but the skeleton has never changed,” he says, comparing it to ‘Boulder’, which he went on to write three times.
After all, the writer defines ‘Mammoth’ as the ‘most austere’ book in the trilogy, at the same time as the one that presents a ‘harder’ story. The novel stars a lesbian woman who lives in the city, where she signs contracts to live, and has a “strong desire to be a mother.” Trapped in modern life, one day she bets on changing her habitat and becomes the mistress of an isolated farmhouse, where she learns to live without intermediaries. “She needs contact with trees and animals, she needs that loneliness,” Baltasar says of the protagonist.
“Peripheral” female characters
In the same vein, he explains that in ‘Mammoth’ he has chosen to “take” the protagonist “out of the city”, “like a beast coming out of the zoo”, he compares. “She needed this accompaniment of the landscape, it was her stage, where she could develop,” says Baltasar.
The writer considers that the women of ‘Permagel’, ‘Boulder’ and ‘Mammoth’ have in common, in addition to being lesbians, that they are “somewhat peripheral” characters. “They are in society, but suddenly they leave. They feel very uncomfortable in the society that has touched them,” he said. Baltasar confesses that in this aspect he “mirrors” himself with his characters. “Creating a protagonist for me is a year-round company,” the writer notes. “He is a person who is not real, but for me he is very real,” he added.
Also, the common denominator of the three books is the fact that they reflect on motherhood, one of Baltasar’s “topics of interest,” as she defines it. “I was a very young mother, at the age of 24, and it’s a subject that interests me,” she confesses. However, Baltasar also argues that after the trilogy, motherhood is a topic she “hopes to leave.” “At the end of the leaflet I want to leave the topic of motherhood, to see if I’m able to keep writing other things without it appearing that way,” she says.
Regarding the structure of the book, Baltasar admits that it “adapts” to what the protagonist “needs”. So he considers it ‘inconceivable’ to write ‘Mammoth’ in the same way as ‘Permagel’. “It didn’t make sense,” he points out. As in ‘Boulder’, the author has opted for the latest novel to be linear and with longer chapters.
As for the writing, Baltasar confesses that he is “carried away” by the story and writes “in a flash”. “I start and many times I don’t know where I will end up today or where I will end up tomorrow,” he explains. However, he admits that he works a lot on language, just like when he writes poetry. It is for this reason that, when choosing between novel or poetry as a genre, the author does not get wet. “I write a kind of narrative where I don’t feel like I’ve abandoned poetry. The challenges I have with language are often poetic, and I feel like I’m working on language in a poetic way,” he explains. “I don’t feel that by doing narrative I miss poetry,” he concludes.